Pia Guerra comments on the return of Hope Hicks to the White House, and I’m not sure if she’s just perceptive or if she’s heard the rumors, too, but there’s something running around that the old man is starting to slip a few cogs and they’re trying to keep him patched up.
Which would not only explain bringing back Hope Hicks, who was, after all, competent, but the rehiring of Sean Spicer, who was, after all, not, and Reince Preibus, who simply represents turning back the clock to simpler times.
And has the ability to discuss badgers.
The other explanation is that Dear Leader feels his escape in the Senate has been a giant reset and that he can start over with no constitutional hindrances.
I guess we’ll see.
But if he’s going to abuse the office, either his old crew will have to keep things under wraps until after the election, or we’ll find out how the voters feel about it.
And if you’re comfortable with how the voters will respond — either way — you haven’t really considered things.
Joel Pett offers a hope that they’ll recognize the difference between Trump’s claim of a healthy economy and their own desperate efforts to stay afloat from paycheck to paycheck.
Which is entirely possible and I’m not dismissing it.
Still, we live in Lotto Nation, where, as Keith Olbermann memorably explained, people expect that the truck full of money is going to pull up in their driveway almost any minute now.
You can’t get through to the cult members, but it might be possible to awaken others, and not just those who are suffering but those with the decency to see that they suffer.
And the notion that Dear Leader’s cult will abandon their dreams of Lotto Nation is no more practical a plan than the notion that people who have never participated in the process will suddenly decide to vote in numbers large enough to make a difference.
Bernie Sanders won New Hampshire and appears to have more or less equaled Buttigieg in Iowa, which, as Mike Thompson suggests, has struck fear into the hearts of Democrats.
I would observe that you can’t complain on one hand that New Hampshire and Iowa are too white bread to indicate much of anything about the nation while on the other, as Democratic Rep Ro Khanna was pleased to note, that Bernie won the Latino vote in New Hampshire.
What, they both voted for him?
I’d suggest that, before Democrats or anyone else worry about him winning the nomination that they see how he does in South Carolina, where he failed significantly the last time around, and on Super Tuesday, where he also finished second in a two-candidate race.
Which adds some credence to Lisa Benson’s suggestion that he’s going to need more, and perhaps larger, balloons to get off the ground and that maybe the panic of mainstream Democrats is a bit premature.
I suspect that this next round is going to show us who is really in the race and who is simply muddying the water, at which point winning a quarter of the vote will no longer be seen as a victory.
Except among those who cling to the notion that great unseen hordes of voters are going to materialize in November, a theory Ruy Teixeira dismantles in this piece, in which he observes
Democrats in 2018, especially the successful ones, did not run on particularly radical programs but rather on opposition to Trump himself, and to unpopular GOP actions on economic policy and health care (tax cuts for the rich and efforts to repeal Obamacare’s protections, for example).
(See Joel Pett’s cartoon, above)
Happy Birthday, Susan B
Pat Bagley offers this reminder that the Equal Rights Amendment is back on the table, a suitable cartoon for Susan B. Anthony’s 200th Birthday.
He adds in a note on his Facebook page that this cartoon is an homage to Nina Allender.
But I would point out that, while he shows a man attempting to halt the march of progress, there was significant opposition to the ERA in its time mounted by Phyllis Schlafly and her “Eagle Forum,” as well as by other women who enjoyed their own careers and power but felt their sisters should remain barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
It was, as Lucy Stone had noted, an old problem.
And Rose Schneiderman, who had a storied history, and was not only a suffragist but a labor activist, ACLU founder and adviser to FDR, didn’t pull a lot of punches in outlining the plight of workingclass women:
Of course, you know the reason they are employed in foundries is that they are cheaper and work longer hours than men. Women in the laundries, for instance, stand for 13 or 14 hours in the terrible steam and heat with their hands in hot starch. Surely these women won’t lose any more of their beauty and charm by putting a ballot in a ballot box once a year than they are likely to lose standing in foundries or laundries all year round.
It was a sentiment echoed by Katherine Milhous in a 1915 poster, when she was barely 21.
The final push for suffrage was an interesting and instructive combination of the Old Guard, who did traditional things like collecting one million signatures for the New York Legislature …
… and the young, militant Alice Paul/Lucy Burns wing, who raised holy hell to push things forward, picketing the White House …
… and organizing a women’s march which was marred by violent opposition from a crowd that roused public sympathy for the women’s movement much as Daley’s goons did for the anti-war movement two generations later …
… though in this case more for the police’s lack of control than for their active participation in the violence.
In the end, the question became one of mainstream acceptance that penetrated all levels of society.
Until the final vote to ratify
By which point it seemed silly that we’d ever quarreled over it.
Go thou and do likewise, ERA.